Two former FBI officials who oversaw election-security work have been charged with lying to Congress about Hunter Biden probes, action officials say shows no one is above the law.
Nikki Cole Floris, 46, and Bradley Benavides, 56, surrendered Friday on arrest warrants after the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia charged each with making false statements to the legislative branch.
The case grows out of their 2023 interviews with the House Judiciary Committee about the FBI’s since-dissolved Foreign Influence Task Force, or FITF, and that unit’s role in Hunter Biden investigations before the 2020 election. Prosecutors say documentary evidence, contemporaneous communications, and witness accounts contradict what both former officials told lawmakers.
Breitbart News reported the charges and the accompanying statements from federal prosecutors and FBI leadership.
Floris headed the FITF from mid-2019 until mid-2022. Benavides served as a FITF section chief from mid-2019 through the 2020 election. The task force led the FBI’s effort to protect that election from foreign malign influence. It has since been dissolved.
In 2023, the House Judiciary Committee questioned both defendants about FITF’s part in the Hunter Biden investigations. Each was warned that lying to Congress is a crime.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said in its announcement that the pair denied FITF involvement in those probes.
"Floris and Benavides testified that the FITF was not involved in the FBI’s investigations into Hunter Biden. For example, Floris told the Judiciary Committee that she was involved in no discussions about Hunter Biden while she was at the FITF. Benavides testified that he only learned of the FBI’s possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop from reading a Wikipedia article in 2023."
Prosecutors describe a different record inside the bureau.
"Evidence shows that Floris discussed the FBI’s investigations into Hunter Biden routinely for more than a year both within the FITF and with others in the FBI. Contrary to his assertion that he learned of the Hunter Biden laptop from Wikipedia, Benavides regularly discussed the laptop with FBI officials in the leadup to the 2020 election."
The office also stated that, in the leadup to the 2020 election, the FBI had several investigations into Hunter Biden in which the FITF participated. An affidavit supporting the criminal complaint cites documents, messages from the time, and witness accounts as the basis for the false-statement charges under 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a)(2), the federal statute that makes it a crime to knowingly lie in a matter within Congress’s jurisdiction.
FBI Director Kash Patel announced Friday that the two ex-officials had been taken into custody. In his remarks, Patel said Floris was on record privately claiming to be “running a shadow government” during the 2020 election in her FITF role.
Patel framed the charges as a basic rule of accountability:
"Lying to Congress by senior FBI officials strikes at the heart of our system. No one is above the law. The FBI has already dismantled the corrupt CR-15 squad that engaged in political weaponization targeting their opponents, including President Trump."
That pairing matters to conservative readers who watched the bureau’s handling of the Hunter Biden laptop story and related election-year influence work become a years-long fight over transparency. The FITF was sold as a shield against foreign interference. The charging papers now allege that two of its leaders misled Congress about what the unit knew and discussed when Hunter Biden’s business dealings and laptop were already inside the FBI’s orbit.
In comments on the case, Pirro put the stakes in blunt institutional terms.
"Lying to Congress by anyone strikes at the heart of our democratic system, but when senior FBI agents lie to Congress believing they are above the law, it’s time to bring the hammer of justice down on them. When senior officials entrusted with safeguarding our nation’s security choose deception over duty, they undermine the very institutions they swore to uphold. Today’s action makes clear that no one is above the law, and we will hold accountable all who obstruct the truth."
The charging theory is straightforward. Congress has a constitutional job to oversee the FBI. Senior agents who run sensitive election-security units sit at the center of that oversight. If they tell the Judiciary Committee they had no discussions and no knowledge that internal records and witnesses later contradict, the public cannot trust the answers it gets about how the bureau handled a politically charged set of cases.
Floris’s alleged private “shadow government” remark, as described by Patel, sharpens the credibility problem. A task force chief who talks that way while denying committee questions about Hunter Biden discussions invites a hard look at whether FITF kept Congress in the dark on purpose.
The verified sequence is short and ugly for the defendants’ 2023 testimony.
From mid-2019 into 2022, Floris ran FITF. Benavides was a section chief through the 2020 election. In that same window, prosecutors say the FBI ran several Hunter Biden investigations with FITF participation. Floris is alleged to have discussed those investigations routinely for more than a year inside FITF and with other FBI personnel. Benavides is alleged to have regularly discussed the laptop with FBI officials before Election Day.
Then, in 2023, both told the House Judiciary Committee a narrower story: no FITF role in the Hunter Biden investigations; no discussions for Floris; a Wikipedia discovery in 2023 for Benavides. They had been warned that false statements to Congress are a crime. On Friday they surrendered on warrants charging exactly that.
The affidavit is not a full public dump of every email and witness name. What the U.S. Attorney’s Office has put on the record is enough to explain the theory of the case: the paper trail and the people who were there do not match the sworn answers.
Open questions remain. The public still lacks the full verbatim transcript pages, the complete affidavit exhibits, the precise surrender locations, and a detailed docket history beyond the statute cited. Those gaps do not erase the core allegation now in court, that two FITF leaders gave Congress answers the government’s evidence calls false.
Taxpayers fund the FBI to investigate, not to manage the political temperature around a president’s son. When senior officials who ran election-security work get charged with lying to the committee that oversees them, the remedy is the same one every citizen faces: tell the truth under oath, or answer for it in court.
